


Phone Call to the Dead

by simpletumbleweedfarmer



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s08e01 Within, F/M, i hate chris carter, i hate everything, i hate mulder's abduction, so sorry I wrote this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24068797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simpletumbleweedfarmer/pseuds/simpletumbleweedfarmer
Summary: Scully is on her first case with her new partner...and without Mulder
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Phone Call to the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> I finally watched the part with Mulder's abduction and I did NOT handle it well. In fact I handled it so poorly, I had to skip ahead to episodes 14/15 so I could see him come back because I was so upset LOL.
> 
> This is what I wrote after watching season 8, episode 1 trying to handle my feelings about Mulder being gone.

It’s her first case without him.

She realizes that when Doggett walks through the door that first morning.

He tries to call her “Scully” and she quickly corrects him.

“ _Agent_ Scully will do just fine, _Agent_ Doggett.”

Scully is too personal, too _Mulder_.

He just nods, taking another sip of his coffee.

He didn’t get her coffee.

Mulder always brought her coffee.

She sits his nameplate down on the desk again, walking over to the projector.

She’s the one who sets up the slideshow this morning, and her fingertips are still sore from where she struggled to snap the slides into place.

She never did it.

He did.

She doesn’t want to admit how bittersweet it is, being in this office. It’s like he’s here, and that’s the problem.

It’s the only place she wants to be and yet it makes it so much worse.

She wishes more than anything should could just talk to him.

Bounce her thoughts off of him and know where she stood. Talking to him always grounded her.

She could talk to Doggett.

He isn’t Mulder, though.

She’s reminded of that when they get their rental car from the airport and he asks her if she wants to drive.

“You can,” she says, looking away before he catches the fact her eyes are suddenly filling with tears.

She gets in the car, and she doesn’t say anything, only looks out the window in silence, and knows this car ride will be hell.

She used to look forward to the drive from the airport to the motel with Mulder.

That’s when they catch up, talk about weekend plans, where they want to go for dinner.

So mundane.

So normal.

She misses it so badly.

She doesn’t want to be here with him.

When they ask for two rooms at the motel, Scully asks that the rooms be next to each other without thinking.

Doggett looks confused, and questions it when they step away from the counter.

“It’s just something Mulder used to do,” she tells him, and Doggett doesn’t pry.

When she locks her motel door behind her, she crosses the room, lifting her suitcase onto her bed, and starts unpacking.

She moves her dress shirts off the top, pausing at the pajamas she packed.

Well, they’re not pajamas. They’re Mulder’s shirts.

She picks up the one on top, his favorite New York Knicks shirt, feeling the tears slide down her cheeks, and she hugs it to her chest.

She didn’t think working a case without him would be so hard, so painful.

She thought she was fine.

She was not fine.

She sinks down onto the bed, letting the t-shirt rest on her lap, replaying that last night in the motel in her mind. The feeling of his arms around her, falling asleep next to him. The way he woke her up the next morning with coffee.

What could she say?

They’re better together.

Doggett knocks on her door around 6 and asks if she wants to get some food.

She agrees, thinking it would be better to get out of this motel room then stay here in her own misery.

Dinner’s worse.

She slides into the booth across from him, and for a second, it’s so normal. Just a typical case.

So, when she looks up, she expects it to be Mulder.

Her heart leaps into her throat when she realizes it isn’t him.

It’s Doggett.

It’s like he’s been taken all over again, except in the booth right across from her.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” she slides back out of the booth, turning her back to him, covering her mouth with her hand.

Dana Scully doesn’t usually cry. Not in public, anyway.

Not in front of her co-workers.

Tonight, she can’t help it.

She pushes open the door to the diner, stepping out into the parking lot.

She takes a couple steps so she’s around the side of the building, where she knows Doggett can’t see her.

She leans back against the cool bricks, looking up into the cool blackness of the night.

Mulder was somewhere up there.

Her shoulders shake, and she wraps her arms around herself, letting the tears fall.

She can’t do this.

She leans her head against the bricks, watching the stars overhead.

She’d give anything to have Mulder here beside her.

Anything.

Doggett doesn’t question it when she walks back into the diner thirty minutes later, picking up her coat, and telling him she’ll eat by herself.

“Everything alright, Agent Scully?” is the only thing he says.

“Everything is-“ she stops, draping her coat over her arm. She wonders how she looks. Are her eyes red? Are her cheeks tear stained?

“It’s fine,” she finally decides to stick with.

“Is it something I did?” he asks. “Because, I’m trying-“

“It’s fine.” She snaps, turning on her heel and walking away.

When she gets back into her motel room, she collapses.

She doesn’t even bother eating.

She just sits there, on her bed.

She remembers when Melissa died how hopeless she’d felt. At least she’d had closure. At least she knew where her sister was.

She had Mulder; she had her work to focus on.

Now that Mulder’s gone, somehow, she has nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

She realizes, when she wakes up from another nightmare, that she sleeps like Mulder does.

Or used to, anyway.

Constant nightmares, constant tossing and turning.

She doesn’t sleep anymore besides a few hours here and there.

Half-asleep from a nightmare and half-drunk with terror, she stumbles to her motel room door more than a few times, about to walk out, walk to the room over, and tell Mulder she can’t sleep.

And she remembers.

And the cycle starts all over again.

Nights are hell, she realizes, and she knows now why Mulder hates sleeping.

She’s already tired when they reach the crime scene, and she’s more tired from Doggett’s constant comments, the questions he asks.

The detective working the case doubts every word she’s saying, and her heart aches for Mulder. He’d understand what she was going through. They made fun of him, too.

When they’re in the car on the stakeout, Scully realizes that it was Mulder who made steak-outs bearable.

It’s been nine hours.

Doggett and she have barely spoken.

He asks about the case, and she confesses she has her doubts.

He tells her that she’s trying to be Mulder, and he’s right.

She is.

She can’t do it.

She can’t be him.

It’s the only thing she can do, though.

The only way she can keep his memory alive, keep his work alive.

She promises herself she’ll try harder, take more leaps.

Mulder was always better at that, though.

After the attack, she stops by Doggett’s room at the hospital, and tells him they’d be flying home the next morning.

Before she leaves, she adds a “feel better.” He nods, and for a second, they’ve found a rocky peace.

She climbs into the driver’s seat of the car, locking the doors, and just sitting there, in the hospital parking lot.

She reaches into her purse, pulling out her cell phone, and dialing Mulder’s number.

She holds the phone in the crook of her neck, as she starts the car, putting it in drive, and pulling out onto the highway.

“Mulder, leave a message at the tone.”

Her vision blurs for a second at the sound of his answering machine, and she pushes the tears down as the tone sounds.

“Mulder, it’s me. It’s…”

She pauses for a minute, and then continues. “It’s your Scully.”

It seems almost too personal, but she feels like she needs him to know.

New partner or not, she’s his. She always would be.

“I worked this case, Mulder, and I wanted your opinion…”

She talks to him the entire drive back to the motel.

She talks to him on the way up the stairs to her room.

She talks to him as she steps into her room, sitting down on her bed.

She isn’t even sure if she can leave a voicemail message this long.

She doesn’t care.

It’s the first normal thing she’s done since he’s disappeared.

“Mulder, I don’t know if you’d mind, but I’m going to borrow your desk, and I’m going to let Doggett move a desk in for him in your office. Once you get back, I can use it.”

She swallows hard at the words “once you get back.”

“Let me know if that’s okay.” She hears a warning “beep” in her cell phone, telling her battery is low.

“My phone’s almost dead, Mulder, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

She pauses for a moment, her phone warning her again.

She knows what she wants to say, and even though she’s talking to a voice mail machine, she’s strangely nervous.

“I love you. More than anything. I’ll find you, Mulder. I’ll bring you back.”

The last words break with a sob, as she hangs up the phone.

When they get home, Doggett comes into the office.

Mulder’s office.

She tells him he might as well bring in a desk.

Doggett looks surprise but agrees, and says he’ll bring it in by the end of the day.

He walks out, and Scully walks around Mulder’s desk, sitting down in his chair, and pulls her phone out of her purse.

_No missed calls._

She dials Mulder’s number, and pulls a case file across the desk until it’s in front of her.

“Mulder, leave a message at the tone.”

“Mulder, it’s me. It’s your Scully. I have this case…”


End file.
